The Ruin

by Richard Lee Byers

  “Your Majesty,” one of the dragons rumbled, a sneer in its tone. Taegan glanced about, seeking the source of the salutation, and winced when he found it. Its pale hide mottled with rot and its sunken eyes glowing in the gloom, a dracolich crouched on the gable-and-valley roof of a once-splendid house.

  Jivex snorted. “What’s the matter, are you scared? We already killed one of those things.”

  “I remember,” Taegan said. “I intend to dine out on the tale for the rest of my days. But as you may recall, Vorasaegha nearly tore it to pieces before we became involved, and even then, it was brisk work.”

  Still, that turn of events had one positive feature: To all appearances, the sudden advent of the dragons had startled and unsettled the rest of Iyraclea’s minions. Even the Icy Claws pivoted back and forth, keeping a wary eye on the gigantic reptiles looming on every side.

  The gelugon that had been following Taegan and Jivex around was as distracted as the rest. The elf looked around, spotted Dorn, pressed a finger to his lips, and skulked in the half-golem’s direction. He didn’t know what was about to happen, but suspected he and his comrades would fare better united. Jivex flitted after him.

  Meanwhile, Iyraclea emerged from the crowd to glare up at the dracolich. Unlike her followers, she appeared not a whit dismayed, and Taegan proffered a grudging admiration.

  “Zethrindor,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “That’s what I was about to ask you.”

  “Don’t be insolent! I ordered you and the rest of these wyrms to Sossal.”

  “The war’s going well,” said Zethrindor.” His tail switched, breaking loose clay tiles to clatter and spill off the roof. “It’ll keep for a few days. But while we condescend to conquer a kingdom for the benefit of a human, you break your pact with Sammaster.”

  “What do you know about it?”

  “In exchange for our help, you promised to kill strangers. Instead, you plotted with them to pry into the wizard’s business.”

  Taegan and Jivex closed the distance to Dorn—and Kara, too, the bladesinger observed. Pavel, Raryn, and Will were likewise heading toward the same spot.

  “What do you care?” Iyraclea said. “You’re no true friend to Sammaster or anyone else. So why should it concern you if I play him false?”

  “Because of the future he promises. I can’t have you stealing or tampering with a magic that will help to bring it about.”

  Iyraclea curled her lip, and Taegan shivered as a sudden chill permeated the air. “But you’d steal it yourself in an instant, wouldn’t you, to improve your own position.”

  “If it embodies the destiny of dragonkind, a drake should look after it. That’s obvious, and even if it isn’t, I didn’t come here to debate. Produce whatever it is you’ve discovered, and even though you broke your covenant with Sammaster, we’ll keep faith with you. We’ll finish the subjugation of Sossal, and leave you in peace thereafter.”

  “That’s easily done. Behold.” Iyraclea waved her dainty hand at an empty patch of dark, sigil-inscribed paving. “We found nothing, because there’s nothing to discover.”

  “Truly? Well, in that case, you must be eager to return to your altars. Do so. Simply leave me your prisoners, as they’re clearly of no use to you, and they and I will poke around this curious place a little longer.”

  “I think not. Go back to Sossal, complete your task, and content yourself with the plunder and feast of human flesh you win in the process. Otherwise, I’ll destroy every last one of you.”

  The dracolich sneered. “A hollow threat, to say the least.”

  “Hardly,” Iyraclea said. “Don’t you whites and ice drakes understand your own natures? You’re creatures born of cold. It infuses and sustains you, and the goddess who lends me her might is the source of it. With a mere thought, I can turn your own essences against you.”

  “If Auril herself were here,” said Zethrindor, “perhaps I’d be afraid. Or maybe not. Sammaster proclaims the time of the gods is passing, and the age of the dracoliches is at hand.”

  Without the slightest preparatory shift to warn of his intentions, the wyrm sprang.

  Iyraclea raised her hand, and defined by a whirl of fallen leaves, a twisting cyclone howled into existence between her and her plummeting attacker. The vortex hurled Zethrindor off course to smash down on the pavement. At the same time, the Ice Queen, gown lashing around her, lifted by another tame wind, perhaps, floated backward across the plaza, distancing herself from the white, cadaverous wyrm. She shouted words of power and swept her arms through sinuous passes. Suspended in midair like a curtain, rows of luminous blue blades appeared down the long axis of Zethrindor’s body. Spinning like wheels, they hacked his rotting scales and withered muscle.

  He roared, sprang clear of the effect, reared and cocked back his head, and spewed his breath weapon. Probably, like Taegan, Iyraclea expected frost, the substance whites usually expelled, and to which she was surely impervious, for this time she made no effort to defend. A plume of dark, billowing fumes washed over and made her flail in agony. Zethrindor had evidently cast a spell to change his breath into a green’s corrosive, poisonous exhalation.

  The dracolich lashed his pinions, took to the air, and hurtled toward her—and that was when mayhem exploded on every side, as everyone else decided to join the fight. Some excited whites largely wasted their first attacks spewing frigid vapors that froze human barbarians but had no effect on the rest of Iyraclea’s retainers. The more clever whites, and the ice drakes, conjured blazes of magic, or sprang to engage their foes with fang and claw. Javelins and arrows flew to meet them. Spears stabbed and axes hacked. A gelugon materialized half a dozen lesser devils, crouching, snaky-bearded things armed with enormous saw-toothed polearms, to fight on its behalf. Ice wizards chanted incantations in their chiming, clashing, dispassionate voices.

  Wings a silvery smear, Jivex hovered uncertainly. “Do we know what side we’re on?”

  “Neither,” Taegan said. “We need to get out of the thick of it and under cover.”

  “Make for that keep,” Raryn said, pointing a stubby finger. They all skulked forward, skirting lunging, wheeling, stamping combatants who, by virtue of their prodigious strength and size, could have trampled and killed them without even realizing they were there. They also had to dodge blasts of frost and lightning, flame and the distilled essences of death and disease, that dueling spellcasters hurled back and forth.

  Grateful that he hadn’t exhausted his store of spells in the fight with the tirichiks—his captors had confiscated his grimoire and so prevented him from preparing any new ones—Taegan augmented his natural agility and shielded himself in misty vagueness. His companions likewise enhanced their defenses. Like grouping together and slipping out of the midst of the fray, the tactic made sense, but didn’t really answer the question of how to extricate themselves from their current predicament. It seemed wildly optimistic to hope that Iyraclea, Zethrindor, and their sundry followers would all exterminate one another.

  Abruptly the air grew hazy. Taegan smelled smoke, and a floating spark stung his cheek. He smiled, and the vapor thickened, massing together and taking on definition. A pair of red eyes glowed from a tapered, coalescing head, and Brimstone crouched before them.

  Will laughed. “I was starting to wonder if you’d abandoned us.”

  “The only way to rescue you,” the vampire whispered, “was to fetch something capable of creating a considerable diversion. It took a little time.” He turned to Kara. “Change form, singer. Together, we can fly Dorn, Raryn, Will, and Pavel out of here, and with Jivex’s assistance, conjure illusions and the like to hinder pursuit.”

  “Sounds good,” said Will. “All but the part about dragging the charlatan’s useless arse along.”

  Kara’s body swelled and heaved, and her smooth skin sprouted glittering scales. Brimstone murmured rhyming words. Then Raryn bellowed, “Watch out!”

  Taegan looked around, spotted Icy Claws an
d frost giants glaring back, then felt an abrupt, excruciating chill. He cried out, and his muscles clenched. He struggled to get past the shock of it, while, their magic shifting them instantaneously through space, the gelugons appeared just in front of the would-be escapees. They lifted their lances high to thrust downward, and poised their massive bladed tails to bash and slice. Behind them, the giants scrambled forward. Their footfalls shook the ground.

  A white spear leaped at Taegan. He jumped, beat his wings, rose above the stroke, and kept on climbing, veering repeatedly to throw off his opponent’s aim. He’d avoided taking to the air before, lest it make him too conspicuous, but that was scarcely a consideration any longer.

  He tried to ascend beyond the Icy Claw’s reach, but despite its lack of wings, the devil too shot up off the ground. Sweet Lady Firehair, was there anything the towering, bug-faced fiends couldn’t do?

  Taegan dodged two more spear jabs, meanwhile conjuring images of himself, reflections created without the necessity of mirrors, to baffle his assailant. The gelugon rammed its spear into one of the phantoms, popping it. At the same instant, Taegan lashed his pinions, hurling himself at the creature’s head, and aimed his makeshift dirk at one of the bulging, faceted eyes.

  He hit the target. But instead of driving deep into the devil’s skull and brain, the giant’s spearhead simply scratched the surface of the eye and glanced off, as if it were made of polished stone. The baatezu lashed its tail at him as he hurtled past. Dismayed by his failure to incapacitate it, the giant nearly missed seeing the stroke in time to evade.

  He realized he shouldn’t be surprised, might even have anticipated what had happened if the irrational fear the devil inspired hadn’t been gnawing at his mind. Some spirits were more or less invulnerable to weapons unless the blades bore magical enhancements. But the spearhead was the only weapon he had. All he could do was try to use it.

  He drove home two more thrusts, but each merely chipped his adversary’s pale, gleaming shell. Hoping to fly faster than the Icy Claw could pursue, he then rattled off an incantation to heighten his speed, but while that made it somewhat more difficult for the devil to target him, it didn’t keep him out of its reach. It used its ability to blink through space to stay with him.

  Struggling to stave off outright panic, Taegan insisted to himself that somehow, he could survive this confrontation. Then he glimpsed a flash of motion from the corner of his eye. He tilted his wings, dodging, and chunks of ice shot up from the ground to strike and destroy his last remaining illusory counterpart.

  He saw that one of the ice wizards had conjured the attack. He assumed the transformed magician would keep right on throwing spells at him, but didn’t know what he could do about it. The gelugon was the more dangerous threat. He started to shift his attention back to the devil, then realized what was hanging at the mage’s hip.

  It was Rilitar’s sword! Taegan had previously observed that one of the ice wizards had taken possession of it, perhaps to study the enchantments used in its manufacture, and that was the sword.

  Taegan faked a shift to the right, then furled his pinions and dived at the foe on the ground. He didn’t know if he’d actually succeeded in buying himself a precious second, and didn’t glance back at the gelugon to find out, lest it slow his plunging descent.

  The mage slashed his hands through a mystic pass. More chunks of ice exploded in all directions from a central point in midair. Taegan shielded his face with his arm, and dodged. Some of the missiles battered him even so, but he refused to let the pain balk him.

  He slammed into the wizard and knocked the thing backward onto the ground. Crouched on top of it, he stabbed at the milky, rigid, impassive features, breaking the ice that was the spellcaster’s altered flesh and bone.

  The magician stopped moving. Taegan jerked the sword from its scabbard, felt the surge of confidence and vitality that gripping the hilt always produced, leaped up, pivoted, and the gelugon was there, looming over him, ivory spear leaping at him.

  He parried the thrust, beat his wings and rose back into the air, slashed at one of the devil’s chitinous forearms. The elven sword bit deep, and the Icy Claw gave a buzzing cry.

  Grinning, no longer frightened, Taegan cut it twice more before it could shift the lance to threaten him anew. He hovered before it, inviting an attack, and knocked it aside when it came. That enabled him to close the distance to the gelugon’s barrel-shaped torso. The Icy Claw’s tail swept at him, but he twisted out the way, thrust his sword into its chest, yanked it out, and followed up with a cut to the juncture of the baatezu’s head and shoulders.

  The gelugon floundered backward. It glared and shuddered as if it was straining to bring one of its supernatural abilities to bear. Then it collapsed.

  Taegan couldn’t tell if he’d actually killed it or not. He hoped so, but wasn’t willing to invest any time making sure. The sooner he rejoined his friends, the better.

  But perhaps he had time for one thing. He lit on the ground, kneeled beside the ice wizard, and rummaged through the creature’s pockets and satchel. The transformed spellcasters naturally had no need of warmth, and stripped of their human emotions, cared nothing for modesty. But they needed the odd robe, haversack, and such to carry their talismans and other magical gear.

  Taegan heaved a sigh of gratitude when he pulled a familiar blue-bound volume from the wizard’s satchel. Of course, it made sense that the same mage who’d taken possession of his sword had likewise appropriated his book of spells.

  The avariel also retrieved his scabbard, then lashed his wings and climbed high enough to oversee a significant portion of the frenzied, chaotic battlefield. His heart sank at what he found. The assault on his comrades and himself had thoroughly scattered their little band. On first inspection, he failed even to spot the majority of his friends.

  But he did at least see Brimstone shrouded in a cloud of his smoky breath. The drake pivoted back and forth, ripping with fang and claw at the frost giants who hacked at him in turn with their pole-axes. Pinions sweeping up and down, Taegan rushed to help the vampire fend them off.

  Kara charred a gelugon’s white carapace black with a bright, crackling flare of her breath. The baatezu collapsed twitching, its body smoking. At the same instant, however, hailstones hammered down from the empty air to bruise and bloody her scales.

  She pivoted and saw another ice devil glaring at her. Resuming her battle anthem, she beat her wings and leaped at the thing. It braced its spear to impale her as she plunged down at it, but she broke the lance with a swat, pierced and felled the Icy Claw with the talons on her other forefoot, and reached to grip its head in her jaws.

  Chitin crunched between her fangs. The dense flesh inside was unpleasantly cold, and had a foul, bitter taste. She didn’t let that deter her from biting the beetle-like head in two.

  She spat out the vileness in her mouth and lifted her foot away from the mangled body beneath. No longer pinned, the Icy Claw’s thick, bladed tail whipped up at her. By some dark miracle, the creature still lived.

  The blow sliced the side of Kara’s face, and a ghastly chill stabbed through her entire body. It couldn’t quite keep her from stamping down and grinding the gelugon’s midsection to paste, but she shuddered through the process, and went right on shaking. The spasms made her slow and clumsy.

  This will pass, she told herself. I just need a few seconds. Then frost blasted down on her, encrusting her dorsal surface with rime and turning her pain to utter anguish.

  She hissed at the shock and looked up. One of the larger whites, old and powerful enough that a sprinkle of pale blue and gray scales showed among the ivory ones, was diving at her. She tried to spring out from underneath, but didn’t make it. The chromatic’s claws rammed deep into her back and slammed her to the ground.

  The same giantess who’d guarded Dorn throughout the day chased him, sagging breasts and rolls of fat bouncing, driving him before her with sweeps of a long-handled, stone-headed warhammer. He backe
d and jumped away, looking for an opening to lunge inside her prodigious reach and make an attack of his own.

  But she wouldn’t give him the chance. Despite her bulk, she wielded her weapon adroitly, just as she advanced and when necessary, retreated with considerable agility. She always remained close enough to threaten her smaller foe, yet maintained enough distance to keep him from striking back.

  In time she’d likely make an error, but Dorn wasn’t willing to wait. He didn’t know what had become of his comrades, and didn’t dare look away from the giantess to find out. But his instincts yammered that he had to finish with her fast, so he could help the others. Otherwise, something terrible was going to happen.

  The giantess feinted a backhand blow. Pretending the move had fooled him, he shifted in the direction she wanted him to go. She whirled her weapon over his head and struck from the other side. He lifted his iron arm to shield himself and twisted.

  The hammer clanged against his metal parts. It couldn’t break them, but it was likewise true that the iron couldn’t stop the human half of his body from suffering a portion of the jolt. He cried out, and the blow flung him down on his side.

  He lay still, pretending to be crippled. The giantess leered down at him, then swung the hammer over her head to administer the death blow. At last the weapon was out of his way, and she was standing still. He scrambled up and at her.

  She struck, and the hammer crashed down on the cobbles at his back. She tried to skip backward, but not quickly enough. He lunged behind her and ripped at her hamstrings with his claws.

  Blood gushed, her knee gave way, and she fell backward. At once she let go of the hammer, rolled, and reached for him with her bloated, filthy fingers. He swept his iron arm back and forth, slicing her hands, until she snatched them back. He jumped in to rip at the artery in the side of her neck.